Haunted
by Kristine Thorne
Summary: This is a Bad Girls songfic. It is Karen's thoughts after Ritchie's suicide.


Disclaimer: All Bad Girls characters belong to Shed Productions, not me.   
  
A/N: The words in the asterisks are from Haunted, by Evanescence. This is what Karen might have thought after Ritchie's suicide.   
  
Haunted: A Karen to Ritchie songfic  
  
*Long lost words whisper slowly to me.*  
  
I can hear your words like they were yesterday. When you said you'd missed me, that time you turned up at work, and the way you said that my knowing what I wanted turned you on. Did it really? Or am I to constantly doubt every word you uttered in the privacy of our bed. Was every cry you made at the point of orgasm false? Did you only ever verbally appreciate my assetts because you were fitting me up for your own crimes. The way my name rolled off your tongue and the way you called me Darling, I hear them so often in my dreams. That very first quip you made to me about preferring a woman's touch, and the voice you used when reminding your mother that she used to call you little angel, I will remember these tones of yours forever. Your voice opened up a door for me that day. It showed me a path I could again tread, even after what had happened to me with one of the worst men I have ever known.   
  
*When all this time I've been so hollow inside.   
  
You're still there.*  
  
Before I met you I was empty inside, purged of all the sexual passion I had once enjoyed with abundance. Jim Fenner took that from me. He dried up my sexual arousal in its entirety. You wouldn't have known that, because I chose not to tell you. You were like my drug, my excuse to forget, my path towards blotting out the pain. I used you probably as much as you used me, though in a different way. You used me to assist Snowball Merriman in escaping, whereas I used you to escape from myself, from what I had become. It's true that I was hollow inside, I had nothing left with which to feel happiness, affection or any kind of sexual excitement. But you didnt' know that, which meant you treated me just as I needed to be treated. You took from my body things that I didn't know I could still give. You taught me that I still had a sexual core, you showed me what it was to begin to feel again. If I couldn't feel emotionally, you certainly made me feel physically. I think that's what I needed, to actually reawaken my sexual drive, to show myself that if I couldn't enjoy it myself, I still had the ability to make a man think I was. That was the problem with Mark, he knew me too well, and he knew what had happened to me. He expected me not to enjoy anything he did which meant I couldn't hide from him and even more so I couldn't hide from myself.   
  
*Watching me, wanting me.   
  
I feel you hold me down.*  
  
From the first moment you saw me you watched me. All the time you were talking to your mum in the visiting room, your eyes constantly drifted my way and I thought it was I who had you caught. But it was the other way round, wasn't it. You were the one who reeled me in like a fish on a line. You wanted me because having me fitted your purpose. but I didn't know that then. When you held me down and roughly took what I'd offered you on a plate, even that was to serve a purpose with you. You watched me, you wanted me and you held me down and fucked the living daylights out of me. Yes, you gave me bakc my ability to be sexually interested in someone again, but at the same time you were taking all you could from me. Was I punishing myself, was I letting you roughly use my body to punish myself for getting in to Jim's bed that night. I tried to kid myself that I wasn't. But I let you do pretty much what he did to me. I let you hold me down and thrust your way through all my defences.   
  
*Haunting you, I can smell you, alive.   
  
Your heart pounding in my head.*  
  
I'll never forget the feel of your hands, the smell of your aftershave, the hard muscles of your arms pinning me to that hotel matress. I remember vividly that first time I came to you. I never let you come to me, that would have been letting you too much in to my life. I remember telling you I wouldn't break, and you saying that the bed might. It's almost as if the pattern of that matress was irrevocably burnt in to my back. I put as much in to that night as you did. Maybe I wanted to prove that I could still fight with the best. The bruises you left on my upper arms were not unlike those left by Jim Fenner, and I know that if the saying "To walk differently the next morning" were ever true, you made this possible that night. It is occasionally gratifying to me to think that I was the last person you exchanged such a night of pure pleasure giving with. You certainly went out with a bang, punn unintended. I can still hear your voice as you drew near to climax, your pulse racing neck and neck with mine. You might have taken from me far more than I was ever prepared to give, but I will always remember you for putting me back on the road to recovery. You made it possible for me to feel again, and for that alone I thank you. I despise the way I was taken in by you, and it is maybe for this reason that I will be forever haunted by those furious, ravenous images of you. I hope you are happy wherever you are, ritchie, and that you too will one day find the happiness you so desperately sought, in another time, another world. 


End file.
